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At some point during their extreme makeover this season, the 49ers received a long-missing backbone.

Running back Frank Gore believes the procedure took place around 2:30 p.m. EDT on Oct. 2 when the 49ers entered the visitors’ locker room at Lincoln Financial trailing the Eagles 20-3 at halftime.

In past years, Gore says, Team Jellyfish would have folded.

In Philadelphia, though, the 49ers fought back and grabbed a 24-23 win, a transformative victory in a 12-3 season that has featured four come-from-behind road wins. From 2007-10, the Niners had three such victories.

“The first time it happened was when we were down in Philly,” Gore said. “… In the second half we started making plays.”

San Francisco’s resurgence this season has been headlined by an elite defense, improved quarterback play, excellent special teams and an intangible quality that was on display yet again in Saturday’s 19-17 victory at Seattle, one of the NFL’s most hostile environments.

Leading 16-10 and seemingly in control, the Niners saw their momentum and lead evaporate in a 17-second span as the Seahawks’ Heath Farwell blocked Andy Lee’s punt and, one play later, Marshawn Lynch scored on a 4-yard run.

Gore said previous teams would have panicked in such situations. Instead of saying, “Here we go again,” though, San Francisco embarked on a six-play drive highlighted by Alex Smith’s 41-yard pass to Michael Crabtree and capped by David Akers’ game-winning field goal with 2:57 left.

“Back in the day after that blocked punt, everybody would have been like, ‘Oh man, what are we going to do now?’ ” Gore said. “But now it’s like, ‘OK, let’s go ball. Let’s go make plays and put points on the board and win the game.’”

It’s not a coincidence that San Francisco’s newfound resilience has coincided with the arrival of coach Jim Harbaugh, who began his news conference Monday with opening remarks echoing what Gore told reporters earlier. Harbaugh said his players had a “steely-eyed” look after a Lee punt was blocked for the first time since 2008.

“You go from, ‘Boy, it looks like we’re controlling the football game’ to, ‘Now we’re down,’ in very short fashion,” Harbaugh said. “And we gotta rise to that challenge, and that’s what I sensed from our team to a man, that that was their mind-set.”

Most of the 49ers’ clutch performances this season have come on the road, where they had a 14-50 record from 2003-10, including a 7-39 mark when playing in the Eastern or Central time zone. The 49ers can improve to 6-2 away from home with a win Sunday at St. Louis (2-13), which would match their total of road wins from 2008-10. They would also improve to 5-1 in games played in the Eastern or Central time zone.

One of those wins far from home was a 25-19 come-from-behind victory in Detroit on Oct. 16 in which the Niners converted a game-winning 4th-and-goal pass at perhaps the NFL’s loudest stadium. After that game, Harbaugh didn’t mention his team’s steely-eyed look, but did reference something they might have discovered two weeks earlier in Philadelphia.